Clinical laboratories vary widely in slide and patient populations, sampling and fixation methods, and staining protocols. As a result, significant variations may occur in the cellular presentation of biological specimens such as cervical Pap smears. Although biological specimen screening systems, such as the AutoPap.RTM. 300 System available from NeoPath, Inc. of Redmond, Wash., may be designed to normalize intra-laboratory and inter-laboratory variations to accommodate specimen population, sampling, and preparation differences, some laboratories may have variations that fall outside the designed operating range of a biological specimen screening system. Consistent automated evaluation accounting for the wide range of variation requires detection of these variations during the initial calibration, installation and normal use of the biological specimen screening system.
Assessing and optimizing laboratory practices enables introduction of an automated biological specimen screening system to a broader base of clinical laboratories. Once introduced, laboratory process and machine monitoring procedures can be used to maintain the effectiveness of a system in a clinical laboratory. These procedures increase the effectiveness of integrating a biological specimen screening system into a laboratory. These procedures provide an objective quality assessment of a laboratory's preparation and clinical practices.
It is therefore a motivation of the invention to provide an automated system for assessing, optimizing and monitoring the effectiveness of a biological specimen screening system in routine laboratory practice and to integrate an automated biological screening system to a clinical laboratory.